But what about less obvious examples? A highly counter-intuitive place to look for political fetish objects would be in the overt political sphere itself, but I believe it would be a mistake to not look there. Might we be so conflict-averse/conflict-suppressive that even within the context of overt political struggle, we send out signals that we do not intend to actually pose a threat or cause alarm to the established order? As a person who has thrown myself into the center of political struggles for the past 17 years, I believe that the answer is unequivocally yes. To fully break with the script between established power relationships, I believe, strikes terror in most people’s hearts. It is such a dangerous and unpredictable venture, that most people avoid it at all costs &#151 even most people who are involved in overt political struggle, most of the time. Instead we engage in a dance of mutual accommodation with the powers that be. We may even go so far as to engage in arrestable acts of civil disobedience&#151we may even go to jail and to court&#151but there is often even a script for that now.

How can we make sense of crazy sports riots like the ones that went down last week in Vancouver? How can people get so “up in arms” over a game, while being so resigned about things that really matter?

What is fetish?

I had always thought of a fetish as, more or less, something that someone is peculiarly “into”. A person with a foot fetish is someone who is “into” feet &#151 probably with sexual overtones. Reading Stewart Hall recently, I was introduced to a more complex definition. The basic idea is that a fetish object is something a person fixates on in place of something forbidden. For example, when sexual organs are covered, hidden, and not talked about&#151and perhaps associated with concepts like sin&#151this amounts to something of a suppression of sexuality. Within a culture that practices this suppression, it becomes taboo to fixate upon sexual organs. However, sexuality cannot ever be fully suppressed. The mind may latch onto another object to stand in for what is taboo. This is the fetish object. (This process typically happens subconsciously.)

The brain’s system of cognitive associations helps to facilitate this possibility. The sexual fetish object becomes neurologically connected to sexual feelings; these feelings trigger thoughts of the object, and thoughts of the object trigger sexual feelings. (Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran even suggests that foot fetishes may be particularly common because the region of the brain that processes sexual sensation is right next to the region that processes feeling in the feet.)

Related to the fetish object is the idea of the transitional object. The idea is that small children cling to transitional objects (aka comfort objects) such as blankets, stuffed animals, or pacifiers as a substitute for the mother-child bond. This happens in a stage when the baby is learning boundaries between self and everything else. During this stage, separation from mother can feel upsetting. The transitional object helps the child gain some sense of security and control in her absence.

Political suppression

What does this have to do with politics? Well, if politics is taboo&#151as the cliché claims&#151might it share with sexual taboos this pattern in which suppressed urges latch onto less taboo, more socially sanctioned objects? (It’s important to note that neither sex nor politics is universally taboo across cultures.)

For this to be so, politics would have to be something more than an elective activity. Politics would have to be something of a primal instinct; something of a hardwired instinctual desire that could perhaps&#151like sex&#151be redirected and partially suppressed, but never fully extinguished. I suspect that politics is something like this. I suspect that the idea that politics could ever be only an elective activity for self-selecting participants is a somewhat peculiar product of our modern society; and that a primal political instinct permeates everything at a level comparable to sex-drive, and that it is suppressed in comparable ways too.

We feel strongly about PFC Bradley Manning’s situation, and we’ve been at the actions we’re tweeting about. Last month Beyond the Choir LLC began a partnership with the Bradley Manning Support Network. We’re lending a hand with outreach to the news media and with public narrative strategy.

Zack Pesavento joined our team at the beginning of this month to work with me on this effort. He’s done some great media-related work in the past with the AFL-CIO and the Human Rights Campaign and volunteer work with several other organizations, including Civilian-Soldier Alliance (a favorite collaborator of ours).

You’re likely to see some updates about Bradley Manning and the campaign to support him here at BeyondtheChoir.org. And of course we’re continuing to build the site up as a forum for grassroots strategy, nuts-and-bolts social change tools, and deeper theory-made-practical &#151 around many different issues. As always, we invite you to post your tools and reflections about grassroots organizing, campaigning, and social change struggles.

I am the director of Beyond the Choir, an organization that partners with social justice groups to craft resonant messaging, plan strategic campaigns, and mobilize larger bases of support. Our name captures the core of our mission: in order to build movements capable of winning real change, we need to do more than just “preach to the choir.”

Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. AK Press ~ Coming in January 2017

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Be the change you wish to see in the world. State power is also important.